Having “The Talk” with Your Preteens (Passport2Purity)

*I received a Passport2Purity Getaway Kit from FlyBy Promotions in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

Having “The Talk” with Your Preteens (Passport2Purity)

My daughters are ten and twelve years old now, and we’ve had discussions about changes to their bodies and other intimate issues for a few years. I was pleased that the doors of communication were open, but I’ve often wondered if I had forgotten to talk to them about something important. After all, no one ever gave me an outline of topics to cover. My mom made it all seem so effortless when I was a preteen, while I’ve fumbled through, trying not to feel embarrassed.

Somewhere along the way, I heard about Passport2Purity (P2P) and was interested, so when I had the opportunity to get a Passport2Purity Getaway Kit, I took it! While it’s recommended that this kit be used on a weekend getaway with your preteen, our finances didn’t allow that this summer. Instead, I tried to make our sessions special by going to Sonic Happy Hour and allowing each of my daughters to choose the drink of her choice. Then we went home, grabbed a snack, and settled in.

I wondered if I would have to drag my daughters through to completion of the program, but to my surprise, they began begging me to do the next session before we finished the one we were on! We finished all five sessions plus the optional session in two weeks.

The sessions covered the meaning of purity, the purpose of dating, changes to their bodies, the hows and whys of intimacy between a husband and wife, and peer pressure. The optional session touched on related topics that kids face as they go through their teen years.

The session CDs are entertaining and engaging. Each session also has a project that drives the main point of the session home. (I’m not a “project” mom, and I did all the projects with items I already had around the house. They were the perfect way to wrap up a session.) The getaway kit includes a Travel Journal for your preteen to take notes in (with devotionals for follow-up after completing the program) and a Tour Guide for parents which has the project instructions, a copy of the Travel Journal (with answers already filled in), discussion questions, and prayers for your preteens as well as other helpful resources.

Before we had even finished the entire program, my daughters told me they didn’t think going through P2P once was enough. They want to repeat the program once a year through their teen years so they don’t forget what they learned, the commitments they have made to themselves, God, and their parents, and why they made those decisions.

Somewhere along the way, I was afraid that legalism would enter the picture and that my daughters would feel condemned if they made different choices than those recommended by Barbara and Dennis Rainey. But while the Raineys made a compelling case for purity throughout the program, they never tried to force students into making any decisions they weren’t comfortable with. Instead, they actually encouraged students and parents to continue to discuss the information presented until the student was able to make informed and voluntary decisions about that information.

Over and over again, the Raineys stress that if students don’t have a plan ahead of time, someone else will decide for them. They encourage preteens to decide what their boundaries are now so they have a better chance of maintaining them later. They also present lots of grace in the recorded testimonies of older teens and young adults who made good decisions and ones they later regretted. They present all of them without condemnation, criticism, or judgment.

Now I feel like I have been thorough in helping my daughters understand what they’ll be up against in their teen years, and the doors are wide open for discussions about sensitive issues that can be difficult for parents and preteens to bring up.